Why is that stretch along the east coast (North from Nanaimo) so Conservative?Also, wow at Nanaimo itself. Does it just naturally fall into a northside and a southside, or is there a lot of personal vote for incumbents involved in creating that impression?

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Why is that stretch along the east coast (North from Nanaimo) so Conservative?Also, wow at Nanaimo itself. Does it just naturally fall into a northside and a southside, or is there a lot of personal vote for incumbents involved in creating that impression?

I was looking at Nanaimo and wondering that myself - although I was wondering if it was a bit of a gerrymander, given that the riding that the northern half falls in seems to be predominantly Conservative, but with some strong NDP polls, whereas the riding in the southern half of the city seems to be a pretty strong NDP riding throughout - so I was wondering if the Tory end of the city had been deliberately put in a possibly marginal Tory riding to bolster the vote, whereas the NDP end had been left in a strong NDP riding?

It's not as if splitting the town can be avoided, except maybe by drawing a district tightly around it and having another connecting coastal areas north and south of it, nominally connected through the comparatively empty west coast - now that would be a gerrymander (though it wouldn't look it).

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"The secret to having a rewarding work-life balance is to have no life. Then it's easy to keep things balanced by doing no work." Wally

"Our party do not have any ideology... Our main aim is to grab power ... Every one is doing so but I say it openly." Keshav Dev Maurya

It's not as if splitting the town can be avoided, except maybe by drawing a district tightly around it and having another connecting coastal areas north and south of it, nominally connected through the comparatively empty west coast - now that would be a gerrymander (though it wouldn't look it).

Yeah - that's what I thought would be the (perhaps more natural) riding - the town and its surrounds? Probably more of a community of interest around the one town, rather than splitting it? Anyway, it may not be a problem, as you said, it might be more the personal vote of a popular incumbent, or it may be, as Earl suggested in a previous thread, strategic voting.

Why is that stretch along the east coast (North from Nanaimo) so Conservative?

It's one of those areas where old middle class people go to die.

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Also, wow at Nanaimo itself. Does it just naturally fall into a northside and a southside, or is there a lot of personal vote for incumbents involved in creating that impression?

It's a fairly natural (ie; class) division IIRC.

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I assume the large swaths of land voting NDP on Vancouver Island are industrial areas dominated by logging of some sort, or mining if it's still around (there was coal mining in Nanaimo at the turn of the 20th century, and Nanaimo elected Socialist Party MLAs).

West Vancouver is where most of the people live in this riding. Some interesting things going on outside WestVan though, like in Whistler. The map seems to show some heavy vote splitting there between the Greens and Liberals (and possibly to a lesser extent the NDP) allowing the Tories to win a few polls.